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Potsdamer Platz
Potsdamer Platz is a wasteland smack dab in the middle of the "death strip". The Berlin Wall envelopes this traffic square almost entirely, where it was once the busy city centre of pre-war Berlin. The Allies split Potsdamer Platz amongst themselves, with the Americans and British getting the west side and the Soviets the east. The section of the "death strip" here is exceptionally wide. Buildings have been levelled and replaced with barbed wire fences and lines of anti-tank fortification. The guards have orders to shoot on sight, to anyone found on the wrong side of the wall. :Over the past decade, all the buildings have been demolished except two—Weinhaus Huth, a former winery built with a steel skeleton, and Hotel Esplanade, once the grandest hotel in Berlin. The Hotel Esplanade can still be accessed with police permission. People have used it for shows, events, or film locations. Most of the time the buildings stay empty, home to only a small community of squatters who live under the wall. 'Hansa Tonstudio' :Hansa Tonstudio is just around the corner from Potsdamer Platz, with an address on Koethener Strasse. The English performing artists call it "Hansa by the Wall". Its famed Meistersaal has been around since the 1910's, then a concert hall in the building of the Guild of Masons. The current owners of Hansa Studios refurbished it and named it Studio 2, and installed five other recording studios to fit their needs. Artists who have recorded here include U2, Iggy Pop, Depeche Mode, David Bowie, Nick Cave, just to name a few. :The building has a Neo-classical facade with six ionic Greek columns, above which is a frieze engraved with the word "Meistersaal". The entrance hall is clad in dark marble, and provides access to the foyer, the Meistersaal, and the lifts to the offices upstairs. 'Meistersaal' The Meistersaal was built in 1910 as a chamber music concert hall, and throughout the years has hosted theatre, cabaret shows, classical music, and modern recording artists. The interior comprises of rich, dark woods--on the floor and on the carved panels decorating the walls. The ceiling is seven metres high and made out of wood, with a distinctive octagonal coffered design and edges inlaid with gold cornicing. The windows are multi-paneled and take up two-thirds of the length of the wall, covered in velvet mahogany drapes. The room is lit by multiple small chandeliers and has no fixed seating. One end of the room is taken up by the stage, four-by-six metres, with two adjacent dressing rooms built in over two floors. 'Gruener Salon' The Gruener Salon (Green Salon) is the bar area of the Meistersaal, so-called because of its tastefully green decorations. There is a fixed bar counter made of wood, with dark marble panelling on its vertical surfaces. Matching it are the dark marble wainscotting on the walls, below wall panels painted in pale green. The ceiling is decorated with period cornicing. The floor pattern is herringbone. White couches are available for seating, near a large, green-draped window.